The Falcon 9 booster for the Anasis-II mission is a history-making rocket. It was the booster used to deliver NASA astronauts to the ISS in May.
SpaceXSpaceX has had an unfortunate run of Falcon 9 postponements recently, with both a Starlink launch and the launch of the Anasis-II mission being delayed in the last 12 days.
Anasis-II is a South Korean military satellite that was originally scheduled to launch on July 14. But SpaceX announced it was pushing back blast-off "to take a closer look at the second stage, swap hardware if needed" just a day before launch. SpaceX had also postponed its latest Starlink launch on July 8 and then again on July 11.
On Sunday, Elon Musk's spaceflight company announced the Anasis-II mission would now launch on Monday, July 20.
Targeting Monday, July 20 for Falcon 9 launch of ANASIS-II from SLC-40
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 18, 2020
The Anasis-II mission will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The new launch window opens at 2:00 p.m. PT (5 p.m. ET) on Monday, July 20 and closes just under four hours later.
You can watch the broadcast live, via SpaceX's YouTube channel, below. It usually begins streaming around 15 minutes prior to launch.
If it happens before the Starlink mission, which is currently awaiting a new launch date, it will be SpaceX's 12th launch this year, the 90th flight of a Falcon 9 and the second overall for this particular booster, which was first flown in May to deliver NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station -- the first time a commercial company has done so. Ergo, it's got some history.
The payload, Anasis-II, is South Korea's first military communications satellite. Because of its use in the military, there's not a lot of information about it, but for the fact it's based off the Eurostar E3000 satellite bus, according to the Everyday Astronaut.
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